Posted
by
CmdrTaco
on Monday May 17, 2010 @09:23AM
from the wurds-our-hard dept.

eldavojohn writes "Yesterday the Texas textbook controversy was reported internationally but the news today heats up the debate as California, a state on the other side of the political spectrum, introduces legislation that would block these textbook changes inside California. Democrat Senator Leland Yee (you may know him as a senator often tackling ESRB ratings on video games) introduced SB1451, which would require California's school board to review books for any of Texas' changes and block the material if any such are found. The bill's text alleges that said changes would be 'a sharp departure from widely accepted historical teachings' and 'a threat to the apolitical nature of public school governance and academic content standards in California.'"

Was there or was there not an independent nation called Texas from 1836 to 1846?

Louisiana Territory was full of Americans. That doesn't mean we didn't get it from France.

Yes, but we bought the Louisiana Territory. Texas would be the equivalent of Canadians moving into Michigan, then claiming Michigan as an independent nation, and finally taking the independent nation and joining Canada.

Yes, but we bought the Louisiana Territory. Texas would be the equivalent of Canadians moving into Michigan, then claiming Michigan as an independent nation, and finally taking the independent nation and joining Canada.

The United States of America would be the equivalent of Europeans moving into the 13 colonies, then claiming the 13 colonies as an independent nation, and finally the independent nation growing and wiping out the rest of the native population.

The silly thing is, you are both correct, to a point.
Mexico, if I recall my history classes correctly, offered the area that is now Texas to fairly generous settlement terms to any and all takers, provided they could meet some basic requirements needed for Mexican citizenship at that time. It was later, when they decided to actually enforce those requirements, that several inhabitants of Texas, mostly immigrants from non-Spanish speaking countries, (such as the U.S.) rebelled, and subsequently declared an independent republic. Soon thereafter, the governing parties of this new republic petitioned to join the U.S., but the U.S. Congress balked at the idea, partly on the basis of a reluctance to assume Texas' war debt with Mexico, and partly to avoid unneccessarily antagonizing their neighbors/ international peers. Eventually, and with considerable reluctance, Congress had a change of heart on the matter, partly due to public sentiment, partly due to questions regarding domestic policy (disposition of slavery, transport logistics to regions further West, there are certainly other reasons) and Texas was brought into the Union.

The concept of Texas secession later became of increasing importance around the time of the Civil War, and a token permission had been allowed for that provided that if such occurred, the state of Texas would do so not as a single bloc, but as at least 5 seperate entities, supposedly as a consequence for their participation in the Civil War? I may not be remembering that right, though. In any case, it is now, to the best of my knowledge NOT allowed due to a relatively recent legal decision, but as IANAL, someone may wish to further verify (or correct) my recollection.

So the area now known as Texas rose out of the gulf in 1836? Or was there a conflict in which settlers fought for independence from Mexico?

The latter. But the larger point is that the poster I replied to was making the case that the United States "stole" Texas from Mexico, because the settlers in Texas came from other US states.

This is a false argument on two fronts; one, the settlers left the US to start new lives, literally in another country. This wasn't some secret plot by the United States government... "OK, you guys go live in the Texas territories for 20 years, then rebel, then form your own republic for 10 years, then join the Union. Our plan is foolproof!".

Second, that land didn't originally belong to Mexico. Nor did the land in Southern California, Arizona, or New Mexico. Mexico invaded those lands and conquered the local Indian tribes to get it. Mexican troops had a reputation for utter brutality among the Indian tribes. You think the Indians hated the US? Ask an Apache, Pueblo, or Hopi what he thinks of Mexico.

The Spanish government had been active in those areas before there was a Mexico. And I'm not sure pointing at Mexican atrocities is a particularly effective way of defending American atrocities (not that the Indians were simply quiet, innocent victims, there was plenty of violence from lots of corners). The whole thing is one of many historical messes I am glad to say that I did not take part in.

My point was mostly that your response still painted an overly simplistic view of the situation (which I would say is the wrong tack to take when you are complaining that they have poorly characterized things).

The Spanish/Mexican upper class enslaved native population of their conquered territory. But to be fair - the French and English in Canada and the US also took Native American slaves, as did many Native American tribes. That's the problem with history, if you care to look at all of it, there is always something that taken out of context can be used to support or demean someone's opinion. History, like science should be viewed critically not politically, if you wish to learn. Those who scrub the data are seeking to obtain an advantage over you to restrict your liberty for their own gain.

This wasn't some secret plot by the United States government... "OK, you guys go live in the Texas territories for 20 years, then rebel, then form your own republic for 10 years, then join the Union. Our plan is foolproof!".

Actually, if you examine history closely, you'll find that most settlements and colonisations(by Anglo-Saxons at least) follow this exact model. Settlement is ostensibly a completely private enterprise, but usually has the tacit approval of government and the explicit backing of powerful elements within or around government. The settlement of Texas was always supported and sold as part of the American manifest destiny franchise, and everyone knew it--especially the Texan settlers.

Mexico did not exist as a country until 1821, when it declared independence from Spain and became the first Mexican Empire. Mexico did not become a Constitutional Republic until 1824. In 1835, General Antonio López de Santa Anna seized control of Mexico and abolished the Constitution of 1824.

Stephen F. Austin began his Anglo settlements in Texas in 1821, the same year that Mexico first declared independence from Spain. Texas won its revolution from Mexico 15 years later, in 1936.

Calling the War for Southern Independence a civil war is an example of historical spin.

Pardon? It was both a civil war and a war for independence. If the south would have succeeded in seceding it would be called a war of independence today. The unionists prevailed, so because the primary feature of the war was that it was between two groups who were part of the same country both before and after the conflict, it is accurate to call it a civil war.

I don't go picking fights with people who insist on calling is a war of independence (because as I've mentioned it was), but I do consider that they're trying to make it something more noble than it was. The only thing that irritates me is people who persist in flying the battle flag of the confederacy. I know that they've been taught that it's a sign of southern heritage, but this is a perfect example of politicization of history. It's a battle flag. It symbolizes rebellion against the United States of America. The only heritage it is attached to is a heritage of racially motivated anti-government sentiment. What really cracks me up is people who fly the flag of a failed rebellion and yet claim to be patriots.

That's the problem. Texas buys the most textbooks, and thus has undue influence on the industry. Thanks to scorched earth capitalism, making money is more important than making sure that textbooks are accurate. Anyone who does 10 minutes of research will find that the whole notion of the "Cristian Nation" is laughable. If anything our nation's ideals came from John Locke and his "The Two Treatises Of Government" through Thomas Jefferson.

To deny Christianity's role in the founding of America would be an outright lie. Likewise, to say that America is founded solely on the Christian religion would be untrue.

America was founded on the concepts of individual rights, self-governance, and the idea that man has certain rights that the government as no authority to interject themselves into. While, to my knowledge, all of the Founders themselves were monotheistic or Agnostic, it would be one hell of a stretch to say they shared a common religion.

Truth be told, a Christian of just about any sort would be at home in early America. Pagans and Athiests, less so, but they would probably be at little risk. Luciferians, Wiccans (who call themselves witches), etc? Ha!

The tradition of religious freedom in the US stemmed from the fact that a number of important early colonial efforts were established by Non-comformists who were being heavily persecuted in England. The inspiration for the 1st Amendment was, by and large, the response to the absurdities of Catholics and non-conformists have to attend Anglican masses at least once a year, and of what amounted to religious tests for most high offices in England (in fact, the highest still denies the throne to a Catholic).

That's what makes so much of this so sad. The Founding Fathers believed well and truly that the State had no business meddling in what went between a man and his god(s). Some of the Founding Fathers were Christians, some stood at the margins and some were clearly not Christian (Jefferson was a Deist, and actually had a rather dim view of Christianity, not uncommon among Enlightenment thinkers). They're job, in their eyes, was to create a government that protected but did not intrude upon what they felt was a fundamental liberty; the right to worship as one wished to. That meant no religious tests, no indoctrination. The State, in their eyes, had no damned business teaching religious beliefs. There are churches aplenty to do that.

That is, I suspect, why Jefferson is such a substantial target, because he was the first to substantially explain the Establishment Clause in his letter to the Danbury Baptists. Here we have one of the major formulators of the Bill of Rights telling people exactly why they had written what they had written, and he's been the chief obstacle in any number of battles between religious fundamentalists, reconstructionists and all manner of whacked-out religious malcontents and reactionaries. The obvious thing to do, at that point, is to minimize his role. The Soviets used to do the same thing, becoming experts and expunging important figures from the historical record. It's odd how fanatics of all political stripes end up acting just about the same.

Thomas Jefferson, as president, signed his documents: "on this date 180x, in the year of our lord, Jesus Christ".

I love this one. Shows one of two things -- either the speaker is an idiot parroting others, or the speaker is trying to put one over us. A.D. 1776 = Anno Domini 1776 = The year of our lord 1776. The "lord" meant was indeed Jesus Christ, the one old Pope Gregory XIII (of Gregorian Calendar fame) would have recognized. It's just traditional formula.

Yes but Jefferson also added "Jesus Christ" to the end of his presidential signatures, NOT a standard practice at the time.

Jefferson did lots of things that were non-conventional... like wearing casual clothes to State dinners. He was radical, but far from being an atheist (or anti-christian) as many modern textbooks falsely claim. After I finished college I really thought Jefferson hated both God and the Church. It wasn't until I started reading his actual letters/writings that I discovered the college

He didn't say the founders weren't Christians. He said the founding principles aren't Christian. The founders were smart enough to see how politics corrupts religion and vice versa. They built the government without inserting much if any Biblical principles into it. See anything in the Constitution about coveting wives, worshiping on the 7th day or giving up worldly wealth?

The claims this country is a "Christian" country is very much false. The founders were smart enough to separate their religious beliefs from what they learned through history and philosophy as functional, fair and resilient government.

He didn't say the founders weren't Christians. He said the founding principles aren't Christian. The founders were smart enough to see how politics corrupts religion and vice versa. They built the government without inserting much if any Biblical principles into it. See anything in the Constitution about coveting wives, worshiping on the 7th day or giving up worldly wealth?

The claims this country is a "Christian" country is very much false. The founders were smart enough to separate their religious beliefs from what they learned through history and philosophy as functional, fair and resilient government.

You are fairly correct. The founders knew that a state religion would be a bad thing. Imagine the turmoil that would have erupted when Kennedy was elected as the first Catholic. Would the state religion change to Catholicism? This is what the Establishment Clause was meant to stop. It was not, however, intended to ban religion from government entirely. A mention of God is not unconstitutional. A cross at a government owned cemetery or national monument is not unconstitutional.

To pretend the Founders were not Christians is anti-truth and makes you no better than the Texan book-writers.

With all due respect, you have an extremely simplistic view of history and you're using that as the basis of a diatribe.

Some of the founders were Christians; there is no doubt of that. Many of them were not. Most of them were theists; it takes a special kind of arrogance that only Christians seems to hold to equate theism with Christianity. Jefferson is generally considered a Deist, as was Franklin and Thomas Paine, probably the most influential of our founders aside from Jefferson. A handful more (perhaps Jefferson here as well) were considered Unitarians. The reality is that it is hard to tell, not only because of the passage of time but because of how people--quite on the topic actually--all want to claim great people. It's much the same as both parties claiming that Thomas Jefferson would belong with them if he were alive today. It's hard to separate the truth from the fiction. Suffice it to say that there were many different religious leanings among our founding fathers.

However, it is also undeniable that whatever their personal beliefs, most wanted to keep them away from government. They put it in the first damn amendment, without which the Constitution would not have passed. When one claims a "Christian backing," even insofar as many of them were personally Christians, it paints a different picture than history seems to support.

It is also worth noting two things: One, that people wrangle over the very definition of Christian such that it may include everybody under the sun or not--usually those pushing Christianity as the great truth, I suppose. To me the definition is simple; it's what separates the major religions of the planet: Was Jesus Christ the son of God and God himself? It is called Christianity after all. Under that definition you can throw aside the Deists and the vast majority of Unitarians (those who believe he was a supernatural power is a gray area to me) out from under the umbrella. And the second thing to note is the claim of many Christians that, essentially, everything good comes from them. Many Christians even claim that morality comes from Christianity, as if it never existed for the first several thousand years of human history or those of us (myself included) who do not believe are barbarians answerable to no one. I mention this because many people claim the country was founded on a "Christian morality" despite the idea that so many of the most influential founders were not, themselves, Christian.

So no, even acknowledging that many of the founders were Christians and most were theists, I don't think it is "anti-truth" to say the country was not founded on a Christian base. It was founded primarily on the belief in reason and free thought, on the backs of Jefferson and Paine who were probably among history's biggest advocates of both. Jefferson, for example, is famously quoted as entreating us* to "question with boldness even the existence of a God." Regardless of his personal conclusions, it's pretty clear he valued thought above them. (As a personal aside, I find religion--not belief--to be the antithesis of that, which I could pull another Jefferson quote about but I'm sure you know it.)

* "Us" through the lens of history. I think the quote actually comes from a letter written to his nephew, but I cannot recall for certain.

That doesn't mean everyone should be forced to be a Christian. Be whatever you want (I am atheist). BUT at the same time to deny the reality that the founders of this country were Christians who devoutly beloved in God and a Christ/Messiah is ALSO a bias, and that bias has perverted our textbooks for decades.

Very few people at their times in the west were not christians. Mostly because not long before, there was a strong correlation betwen not giving the right answer to the question and a sudden downturn of life expectancy. Heck, punish disbelief in anything with death for a few hundred years and you can create a society of believers in it, no matter how ridiculous it is. Easter bunny, M&Ms, virgin birth, doesn't matter.

At their times, the important difference wasn't whether you were a christian or not, that was pretty much a given, but how much power you wanted to grant the church over everyday life. On the one hand, some people wanted the middle ages back, where the pope crowned kings and was generally the #1 bigshot. On the other hand, some people wanted the church to attend to matters of faith and the state to attend to matters of state. I think there's no doubt where the founding fathers stood on that debate.

To pretend the Founders were not Christians is anti-truth and makes you no better than the Texan book-writers.

That's a straw man argument.

This issue is not whether or not some or all of the Founding Fathers were Christians. The issue is the claim that the United States was founded according to Christian biblical precepts and thus its laws should reflect these beliefs. This claim is an outright history denying lie perpetrated by Christian Nationalists. This lie is easily revealed by reading what our Founding Fathers had to say about religion and government.

Some examples:

Benjamin Franklin: "When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it so that its professors are obliged to call for help of the civil power, ‘tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one."

John Adams: "It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of Heaven, more than those at work upon ships or houses, or laboring in merchandise or agriculture; it will forever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses."

James Maddison: "Because Religion be exempt from the authority of the Society at large, still less can it be subject to that of the Legislative Body. The latter are but the creatures and vicegerents of the former. Their jurisdiction is both derivative and limited: it is limited with regard to the co-ordinate departments, more necessarily is it limited with regard to the constituents. The preservation of a free Government requires not merely, that the metes and bounds which separate each department of power be invariably maintained; but more especially that neither of them be suffered to overleap the great Barrier which defends the rights of the people. The Rulers who are guilty of such an encroachment, exceed the commission from which they derive their authority, and are Tyrants. The People who submit to it are governed by laws made neither by themselves nor by an authority derived from them, and are slaves."

Do some research and you'll find more of the same. Thomas Jefferson had a lot to say about the subject as well.

Here is another way to look back. In 1797 the Treaty of Tripoli was signed and unanimously ratified by the Senate. It contains the words "As the government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian Religion..." and you would think that a "Christian Nation" would be upset by this clear statement. The complete text of this treaty and the news of its signing was published in several newspapers of the day and yet there is no evidence of any public outcry or backlash.

This nonsense about America being a Christian nation is revisionist history perpetrated by Christian Nationalists in an attempt to subvert the constitution and the clearly articulated intentions of the Founders of the United States. Of course, don't take my word for it, do some research of your own.

Not me. I learned the U.S. Founders were "Deist" and believed in a Supreme Creator but not christianity or Jesus. It wasn't until I was an adult and started reading the actual letters/writings that I discovered how wrong that is. The textbooks we have used these last several decades are simply wrong. They DO need a rewrite.

You have to consider the context. They were practically still burning heretics at the stake at that point in history. I imagine people worked a whole lot harder to reconcile their worldview with religion back then, especially the leader of a country that is overwhelmingly religious.

Also, this "Jesus Bible" you refer to takes everything supernatural out of the Bible, extracting Jesus' view on morals. In case that's not clear, he is flat out telling you that Jesus was not the son of God. There were no angels, no miracles, no resurrection. If you think that doesn't fly directly in the face of Christianity then I don't know what to tell you.

I think the correct term for most of them is "Free Thinker". E.g, Jefferson was very interested in religion and philosophy. He was a Deist AND a Mason AND a Christian (and probably other things as well)...and above all, a politician. But a politician with philosophical ideals.

Calling Jefferson a Christian is like calling a liberal Unitarian a Christian. He'll accept the label, but it's not really very descriptive.

FWIW, I doubt that MOST Christian faiths deserve to be called Christian, even though that's the traditional term. They've got precious little to do with J.C., even though they worship his words (usually in some particular translation). Worship doesn't imply any degree of understanding. It just implies that you can find some phrase that can be used out of context to justify what you have decided to do for other reasons. The more someone claims to be a Christian, the more I think of "Honest John's Used Cars".

Oooo-kay. He submitted year-after-year to the Virginia government laws to abolish slavery (which of course got turned down every time). He was firmly anti-slavery (as we many of the Founders like Washington, Adams, etc) He added the Right of Freedom of Religion to the Virginia Constitution, in spite of stern opposition from the official State church. He (along with his successor) paid off the U.S. National Debt for the first and only time in history.

He formed the Democratic Party. He founded a university and allowed several of his students to attend for free. When Washington was burned to the ground, he denoted his entire personal library to rebuild the LOC. He stood against the power of Megacorps and the Central Bank, and vetoed it out of existence (I wish our current president would do that).

TJ not a good guy? YES he was. I wish he was running for president today. He'd have not only my vote, but also my free services as a volunteer to help him succeed. Jefferson was not a perfect man, but he was still a far better president/statesman/freedom fighter than any we've had since 1900.

Forgive me, but I fail to see how a few quotes that reference the word "God" or illustrate a belief in the potential of a "Creator" makes the authors of these quotes "Christian". Even regular church attendance in an era where a church was simultaneously a house of worship and a community gathering place does not justify the label. Show me their writings in defense of religion and religion alone. Show me private documents (not those written for a public, and often Christian audience). Show me references to Jesus, Apostles, and core tenets of Christianity. Tell me what denomination each followed (I continue to marvel at how each denomination/sect is "wrong" until a "Christian majority" is needed). I use both "God" and "Creator" in discourse when it eases communication to my audience. This makes me neither deist, or Christian - merely cognizant of constructs that are widely recognized. The ultimate irony to me is, even should this "rewriting" of history succeed....simply look back at the Roman empire to witness what a devout populace integration of church and state engenders.

And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerve in the brain of Jupiter. But may we hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this most venerated reformer of human errors.

-Thomas Jefferson, Letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823

I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent.

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Francis Hopkinson, March 13, 1789

Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed by inserting "Jesus Christ," so that it would read "A departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;" the insertion was rejected by the great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohammedan, the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination.

-Thomas Jefferson, Autobiography, in reference to the Virginia Act for Religious Freedom

I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved -- the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced!

-John Adams (letter to Thomas Jefferson, Sept. 3, 1816)

Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is no more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifiying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory to itself than this thing called Christianity.

-Thomas Paine (The Age of Reason)

I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my church.

Evolution is just as much about cooperation as it is competition. Evolution is not simply "kill or be killed." In fact, that simplification is no more than a justification used by social Darwinists to excuse brutality towards the less fortunate. Better cooperators make better survivors. As we have developed culture, we succeed not by letting our elders die, but by keeping them alive to pass on their knowledge.

You seem to think evolution is directed, that it moves form some less good state to some better state. Not true at all. Fitness criteria change all the time. What is fit today may not be tomorrow. If we cooperate better, and make sure everyone has equal opportunities, we are changing the fitness criteria. That will not cause the human race to 'devolve' as that is not even possible. Evolution does not have a direction, it can't go 'backwards.' What will happen, is that evolution will favor cooperation more, and it will favor sociopathic monsters less. That's a good thing, IMHO.

We can not 'interfere' with evolution, as interference comes from outside a system, and there is nothing outside the system of evolution, that we know about. All we can do is change the fitness criteria, which change all the time anyway.

In short, you have an incorrect and dangerous view about what evolution is. It is the exact same view that some of the worst monsters in history have used to excuse some of the worst atrocities ever committed.

So accepting evolution because the overwhelming majority of scientists, and all but a vanishing minority in any discipline related to biology is just mindless groupthink?

Well I am reasonably well versed on most evolutionary concepts and I can tell you flat out that anyone who denies the veracity of evolutionary theory is either a liar or a fool, and that anyone who advocates teaching Creationism or Intelligent Design or tries in any way to minimize the importance of biological evolution as one of the major theories of the last four hundred years to try to bolster non-scientific notions of origins in a science class is doing so simply to use the powers of the State to indoctrinate. The First Amendment, and a number of key court decisions, but most importantly Edwards v. Aguillard made it clear that the teaching of such nonsense in public schools is illegal.

There will always be people that accept things simply because. But I'll wager the average accepter of evolution theory probably knows more about that theory than the average denier does.

You have no idea how evolution really works. It is not directed. It does not move from 'less evolved' to 'more evolved.' Fitness criteria change all the time. What is fit today is unfit tomorrow. Cooperation plays more of a role in evolution than competition. By being better cooperators, we are not making our species weaker, we are making it stronger. We are changing the fitness criteria so they don't favor sociopaths, but decent, loving, cooperative individuals. Your false ideas about evolution serve only to excuse your own selfish belief system and do not represent reality.

Again, there is no such thing as 'devolution,' as evolution does not have a direction, it can't go backward. You also can't disable selection. All you can do is change the selection criteria. You should really stop listening to Social Darwinists, who have bent the theory of evolution into a twisted funhouse mirror version of the real theory, just to excuse their own sick and selfish ideals.

The Texas revisionism is a reactionary policy, brought about by the resurgence of the "us-vs-them" mentality. Whether justified or not, they are scared, and are lashing out in reprisal. And the reaction that this evokes, is further vilification of anyone who dares call themselves conservative by the representative of the left.

How can any voice of reason expect to be heard, when they will be labeled a "bleeding heart liberal" by the right, and "extremist right-winger" by the left?

My understanding was that this bill was intended to prevent the specific changes proposed by Texas from making it into California textbooks. That is not leftist revisionism. Mr. Lee might be a bit heavy on the rhetoric but unless his bill specifically includes proposed changes to the existing curriculum (which, to the best of my knowledge) I don't think its fair to call him revisionist.

It seems to me that you are engaging in exactly the behavior you are calling out.

There has been a slow rise in us-vs-them mentality since the wealthy and powerful noticed around the time of Reagan that if they pumped the religious and abortion issues hard, they could keep the other 99% of the population split 50/50 on everything.

This was a perfect situation for them. They managed to get 50% of the population voting against itself in the face of mass unemployment and increasing concentration of wealth and income among less than 1% of the population. For some reason, multi millionaire talk show hosts can get people making $46k to vote against themselves using these issues.

No one is implying that all conservatives are evil. That's why it said this:

The alterations and fallacies made by these extremist conservatives are offensive to our communities and inaccurate of our nation's diverse history.

Frankly, if you've looked at the changes suggested, anyone in favor of these is an extremist. The best you could say is that they're not truly a conservative, as they're advocating wholesale revision to the point of making shit up. Here, TFA sums it up neatly:

The Texas recommendations... include adding language saying the country's Founding Fathers were guided by Christian principles and a new section on "the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s." That would include positive references to the Moral Majority, the National Rifle Association and the Contract with America, the congressional GOP manifesto from the 1990s.

The amendments to the state's curriculum standards also minimize Thomas Jefferson's role in world and U.S. history because he advocated the separation of church and state, and require that students learn about "the unintended consequences" of affirmative action and Title IX, the landmark federal law that bans gender discrimination in education programs and activities.

If you don't already see that for the steaming pile of bullshit it is, let me break it down for you:

the country's Founding Fathers were guided by Christian principles

"Lighthouses are more useful than churches." -- Ben Franklin.

Thomas Jefferson had some stronger words about the Christian faith in particular, but I couldn't find them offhand. No, these men were largely deists, making this an outright lie. The most charitable interpretation you could make is that they were guided by Christian principles, even if they weren't Christian, but that's obviously mistaken at best -- the Bible itself is clear about submitting to authority, that any Earthly authority (like, say, the British King) was placed there by God. No, they were guided largely by ideas floating around the world at the time, many dating back to the Greeks -- books like Plato's Republic, not the Holy Bible.

...a new section on "the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s." That would include positive references to the Moral Majority, the National Rifle Association and the Contract with America, the congressional GOP manifesto from the 1990s.

Hardly nonpartisan. I suppose you're going to tell me that the books are currently favorable to modern liberals? I'd say that this is pretty damning evidence of these being not just extremists, but conservative extremists.

The amendments to the state's curriculum standards also minimize Thomas Jefferson's role in world and U.S. history because he advocated the separation of church and state...

Can't have that, can we? It's only one of the pillars of the Great American Experiment, a prerequisite for religious freedom and expression. I very much doubt anyone writing this is a current member of the Church of England, are they? Then they owe their freedom to practice their current religion to Thomas Jefferson.

...and require that students learn about "the unintended consequences" of affirmative action and Title IX, the landmark federal law that bans gender discrimination in education programs and activities.

Are they really suggesting that banning gender discrimination was a bad idea? If you needed an example of why Yee said, "some Texas politicians may want to set their educational standards back 50 years," this is it.

I have to imagine that most conservatives would be ashamed to be associated with drivel like this. In light of that, I think the sentence you quoted is entirely true and warranted, as written:

The alterations and fallacies made by these extremist conservatives are offensive to our communities and inaccurate of our nation's diverse history.

Is he seriously implying that current curricula was set with political blinders on. Not that I agree with the slant Texas has put on history, but to imply that the current histories taught do not have one is disingenuous.

Yes, and this is a serious problem. There is no such thing as an apolitical view of history, as among other things, every viewpoint has its own judgments of the same events. There is no way to teach history independently of those judgments; the best you can do is point out where the judgments are and hope that the students will figure out what to take with a grain of salt and what not to.

To block "deviating from the accepted teachings" is really nothing more than an attempt to cement one's own judgments into the curriculum. I'm no fan of what Texas is doing here, but this particular solution is not an acceptable way of blocking it. Go back to the drawing board.

Heck; I'll give you a new hook. Go after the bit about the US being "chosen by God as a beacon" as a flagrant violation of the First Amendment, because if it's not a case of a government entity (the school board) establishing a civic religion, I don't know what is.

Yeah, and therefore there's no difference between what a large number of learned historians consider true, and what a small group of people whose entire motivation is to restructure history in favor of their political ideology are willing to say is true.

But hey I'm sure that's not your point, since that would be stupid. You're just pointing out that, in general, number of people who agree with something is not an indication of veracity. That's all well and good.

Now let's bring this out of the hypothetical realm of pure logic where an existence proof (long since proven) is all you need to demonstrate the imperfection of historians. Let's talk about this specific case.

In this specific case, the historians are right, and the ideologically motivated revisionists are full of crap.

Ok, let's start by physics. Which part of what was widely accepted as true two thousand years ago ended up being true?

This would be a good point, if we were teaching class 2000 years ago.

All I want in my classroom is the best information we have at the time - no-one's asking for The One True Truth here. (Heck, you only have to go back 10 years to find differences in physics - we lost a planet, didn't ya know.)

I wouldn't object to religion being taught in school - just teach *all* of them, and put it in "Religion" class.

Surprisingly many. In fact, the wonderful thing about science is that it really was true to observation. There are just certain conditions that it doesn't work for. The idea of atoms, geometry, planetary bodies, etc. all come from the Greeks and for the most part, are true today. Euclidean geometry is simply true for certain scales of size and time and energy levels. It doesn't describe things at high energy or small size very well.

The Earth was known to be round-ish (still true today, last I checked), the Sun was the center of the solar system (still true) and the planetary bodies orbited in an elliptical orbit (still true).

But that's not even the point here. It isn't just "commonly accepted" data that is being rejected by Texas. It's knowledge reviewed, scrutinized and accepted by historians who've devoted their lives to studying this field. Those "experts" that Texas has to "stand up to".

I recently found a book that belonged to my grandmother, titled "The strange tactics of extremism" (H&B Overstreet), written in the early 60s.

It basically deals with the John Birch Society and Communism of the era and their tactics, but reading it, you see the EXACT same tactics being used by the extreme liberals and extreme conservatives in this country today.

Brrring...hello Texas? This is California...umm...you're black. I offer into evidence the California teacher spouting off a few days ago about how California is "stolen occupied Mexico". Guess that guy never heard about the Mexican American War (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican%E2%80%93American_War) which Mexico lost. Apolitical? How about historically accurate? Try that for once.

History education as a whole is terrible and really all too often is used to teach an agenda.

A great example is the Atomic bombing of Japan. A good friend of mine went to a very good college. When she told me about what she was taught about WWII was was shocked.It seems that the the US was racist and that is why we nuked Japan and that we treated the Germans with much more respect.

When I asked her about the Batan death march she had never heard of it.When I asked her about the rape of Nanking. She had never heard of such a thing.When I asked her about the threats to kill all the POWs in Japan if the US invaded she never heard of that.But she did tell me that they told here Japan was willing to surrender before we dropped the bomb if we would have promised them that they could keep their emperor. "BTW that is a myth. The goal of negotiations was to prevent the occupation of Japan and not to just preserve the status of the Emperor".It doesn't matter it is all slanted.The teacher brought in a old woman that was a child when the bomb was dropped... That will help bring balance.

Truth is that with the exception of Japan and Germany in WWII the villains tended to not be as bad as history teaches and the heroes then to not be as pure. Notice that I left Italy out. Frankly they where just your average tin pot dictatorship and not really all that evil. The just fell in with a bad crowd. Oh and yes Stalin was just as bad as history says. Heck the only reason that Germany really lost on the Russian front was because Hitler was the on person on the planet that treated the Russians worse that Stalin did!

I get the feeling that all too often History is taught as a way to make use feel superior to those that went before us. Frankly that is a dangerous and stupid thing to do.I would love to see a history class about the atomic bombing where they actually tried to teach the students to understand why Truman thought dropping the bomb was a good idea. What information he had and what was going on at the time.Maybe then we could actually start learning form history instead twisting it to make us feel so much more enlightened than the historical figures from that past.

And what we now know was going on in the Japanese dictatorship at the time, which completely contradicts the notion that Japan was ready to surrender. They were not. Not even after the first bomb. After the second bomb, leadership was divided on the issue of surrender. What pushed Hirohito over the edge, was Stalin's threat of invasion from the north being added to the US threat of invasion.

And what we now know was going on in the Japanese dictatorship at the time, which completely contradicts the notion that Japan was ready to surrender. They were not. Not even after the first bomb. After the second bomb, leadership was divided on the issue of surrender. What pushed Hirohito over the edge, was Stalin's threat of invasion from the north being added to the US threat of invasion.

State it like it's fact, and it is, I guess. But there is room for argument.

The Japanese leadership, which was in flux, especially with the ousting of Tojo and the "Control Faction," had been discussing surrender long before the dropping of the bombs. The invasion of Okinawa really sealed the fate of the country. True the propaganda talked about arming every last citizen with a pitchfork to fight off the invasion, but that was just that, propaganda. Tokyo was already firebombed into oblivion. B-29s were flying overhead without any resistance. The war was over, and the Japanese leaders knew it.

What was happening behind the scenes was pretty chaotic. There was at least one and probably more coups planned and staged as various military officers tried to take power. Sure there were some fanatics who wanted to fight to the last man, but they were luckily few by that point. The seppuku blades had gotten a lot of use.

Surrender did not happen in one shot. Diplomats from different sides were already talking in various foreign embassies. These sorts of prenegotiations usually happen through third party diplomats that both sides see as neutral. The sticking point as usual in WWII was the unconditional part of the surrender that the allies insisted on.

Russia was sitting on the border of Manchuria refusing to move. Stalin and Churchill in particular enjoyed making life difficult for each other. Relations were already breaking down between the US/British and USSR halves of the allies. Churchill in particular was already talking about Stalin as the real enemy now that Hitler was gone and Germany defeated. Roosevelt was more trusting of Stalin, but at this point he was dead, and Truman had taken office. Truman did not trust Stalin, and when he looked at the post war world, realized that Stalin was the biggest threat to America and Europe, not Japan. Russian tanks had rolled into many Eastern European capitals with a heavy hand.

Truman had 3 atomic bombs (I know, we say 2, but we probably lost the third to a japanese submarine on its secret delivery to Iwo Jima), and wanted to use them. Yes, they would help push Japan to have a propaganda excuse to finally sign the surrender, but more importantly, they made a big statement to Stalin. As to allowing the emperor to live. That seems to go against the unconditional part of the surrender. The reason was that the US wanted Japan built back up as quickly as possible as a buffer against Stalin (just like his eastern european "allies"), and it helped keep the stability in post war Japan.

So did we drop the bombs to end the war with Japan, or to start a cold war with the USSR? The answer is yes to both. And anyone who argues exclusively one side or the other is dramatically oversimplifying the situation.

Of course we are lucky in a way. The big lesson to be learned from WWII was that it was caused by an unjust peace and an unfinished WWI.That is why the Western Allies didn't go out of their way to punish Germany and Japan at the end of the war. The Marshal Plan, UN, and NATO are all proof that at least somebody did actually learn from history.In the end that is probably why there wasn't a WWIII.Of course you are right we may soon forget those lessons on a flurry of revisionist history.

"It's an urban myth, especially in this digital age we live in, when content can be tailored and customized for individual states and school districts," said Jay Diskey, executive director of the schools division of the Association of American Publishers.--Three companies are responsible for about 75 percent of the country's K-12 textbooks, Diskey estimated. Representatives for two of them--Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and McGraw-Hill--on Friday referred inquiries from The Associated Press to Diskey. The third, Pearson Education Inc., did not respond to a request for comment.--For now, California's curriculum will not be subject to any modifications, Texas-influenced or otherwise. Last July, the Legislature suspended until 2013 the statewide adoption of new educational materials to give cash-strapped districts a break from buying new textbooks.

In Peru, in the 80s, there was a group of maoist nutjobs called the "Shining Path," who vowed, among other things, to surround the cities from the countryside. What they were and are is a rural terrorist organization.

I've traveled in rural Texas recently. What you have there are a lot of poor, uneducated, disenfranchised white people sporting racist tatoos buying knives and swords at stands by the side of the road. The gun trade is a bit more private but still quite active. The textbook changes just reflect a wider change in worldview in the rural south. What they are poised to do are to become the next generation of terrorist nutjobs fobbing bombs at wealthier people, mostly in cities. They're just waiting for the next corn-pone Hitler, which the networks that gave us the Becks and Palins of the world will be all too happy to provide.

What you have here is a buncha people who are independent and are tired of government encroaching on civil liberty and forcing "help" on us.

The huge problem with this argument is where was this outrage when we had 8 years of unchecked infringement on our civil liberty's, government expansion, insane government spending, and a host of other issues. (I'm not going to even go in to your "help" bit as that rebuttal could fill up a whole other post.)

What you are saying rings so hollow in the wake of a lot of crazy things that went on. Instead only because now the media wing of the far right has gone on the warpath are you all acting as if our governments are acting contrary to their purpose. And furthermore because the far right is feeling so threatened we get what happened in Tx, Az, and what is happening in the GOP primary's now. Sure the far left has it's batch of crazy's but your blind if you don't see that it's the far right at this point that is, and has done, an insane amount of damage to the US in almost every way possible.

Studying stuff you know you will never use seems unappealing enough. Now students will understand that their studies are not only useless, but a load of half-truths made to fit whichever political agenda is in control.

Just memorize stuff long enough to regurgitate it on the exam, and if you can get away with it: cheat. I mean, why not? It's nothing but a lot of useless lies anyway, right?

Maybe, just maybe, subjects like math will not be overly politicized. But that stuff is all being offshored to the world's "best and brightest" i.e. cheapest.

This is exactly the kind of thinking and behavior that leads others to do things like, I don't know, threaten to secede. They assume the rest of the country knows absolutely nothing about them and is completely willing to disparage them for no reason, and it's usually due to willful ignorance like the kind you're displaying.

You've obviously never been to the south and have only seen it on television. Not everyone is a redneck or extreme conservative, the percentage of people who have guns is comparable to the rest of the nation, the foreclosure rate is comparable to the rest of the nation, we pay taxes like everyone else. Educational standards are similar to other parts of the nation, and yet it's true that there tend to be more dropouts, but it's not because the kids are stupid. It's because they're told their whole lives that they'll never be anything but dumb, failed rednecks by bigots like you. (That's right, YOU'RE the bigot here.) Try having that shoved at you, day in and day out, by the media, other Americans, even politicians. It certainly doesn't make most people want to go to school and be an overachiever just to prove everyone in the world wrong, because they're not going to recognize it anyway. Southerners will still be dumb old hillbillies who don't do anything for this country.

But you know, next time you think about some place where you imagine people ride on 4-wheelers all day with guns, who live on welfare and are willing to live with intolerance for those not like them, I'll point to this entire country, because you go an hour outside of any major metropolitan area in the U.S. and you can find people who are exactly the same. And you can come here, to the south, and see beautiful cities, people who work hard for nice things, people who vote based on how they feel, not how their preacher tells them, all those things. Because not everyone is the fucking same.

that joke map showing canada absorbing the west coast and the east coat down to maryland, calling the south and the middle "jesusland" was a funny internet meme at one time, but as of late, is looking more like a serious cause

i admire canada's healthcare, it's sober banking rules, it's pragmatic international policies. and meanwhile i am stuck in this country with these fucking morons in the south ruining this country with neocon presidents, religious fundamentalism and ignorant libertarian wish fulfillment

I read things like this (from both the Left and the Right), and I wonder how we can survive as a nation when we no longer share the same goals, or even a common feeling of belonging to the same group. Frankly, if might be better if we broke up into several nations.

> By forcing banks and lenders to loan money to people without the ability to pay it back or face stiff penalties.

That's just stupid racist nonsense.

All the feds did was to outlaw redlining. Banks were simply forced to use the same standards regardless of the skin color of the applicant.

The fact that banks chose to throw out well established standards is another matter. No penalty is going to force a bank to write bad paper. The only thing that will encourage a bank to write bad paper is if they can sell

According to one enforcement agency, "discrimination exists when a lender's underwriting policies contain arbitrary or outdated criteria that effectively disqualify many urban or lower-income minority applicants." Note that these "arbitrary or outdated criteria" include most of the essenti

Nonsense, the primary responsibility for the irresponsibility in home loans is...the American people. They signed papers they didn't understand and reveled in being ignorant, they bought houses they could not afford, they bought second houses, they took out the equity in their current dwelling, they did everything they could think of to make a buck before the game of economic musical chairs stopped. Now that they got caught holding the bag, they are looking for scapegoats.

That doesn't mean they were not enabled by the federal gov. and by Wall Street securitizing loans and thus removing the connection between risk and collateral. They were ill-served by builders, realtors, local banks, mortgage companies, rating agencies, etc. All that, yet no one put a gun to the American dolt's head and said sign here or else. They did that all by themselves and I (being one myself) do not believe we should let us off the hook for cleaning up the mess.

Yes, textbooks are dangerously biased so lets set the elementary aged kids loose to learn everything from the internet. Seriously? There's so much noise that gets thrown around the web that most adults have trouble identifying what is and isn't real (if I had a dollar for every email I get telling me that cleaner X is going to kill my pets and babies I wouldn't have to worry about the mortgage). Letting someone run free to learn on the internet is like saying "go find information that you agree with", that's all that 99% of people are ever going to do.

I realize you specifically call out primary sources, but do you really think that such sources aren't just as politically bent as modern sources. I guarantee you that you can find primary sources that describe the Kent State incident as everything from a horrible accident, to an violent demonstration, to murder of innocent college students. There's no way that a young kid is going to be able to sift through it and find the facts of the situation, that's why we pay professional historians to gather the facts in the first place.

Texas is such a large market for textbooks that publishers bend over backwards to produce texts catering to Texas' standards. Other, less populous states don't have the population to force publishers to make any sort of changes. They are mostly stuck with textbook standards set by big states like Texas or California. You can say "live somewhere else", but that's precisely the problem - short of states like New York, California, or Texas, you can't live anywhere else that has an effective say on textbooks. These states are the ones that, through sheer size, drag everybody else along. So, heaven forbid you decide you want to live in state with low population density where you're not surrounded by insufferable right wing nut-jobs or by liberal hippies.

Entertaining this claim as being true, we see that TWO highly liberal states (California and New York) are also warping what goes into text books.

Except you're missing an important point. Neither New York nor California passed laws telling history book writers what version of history they were allowed to include nor what religious or political slants were required by the state. Texas did, forcing California to react in order to put an equal and opposite pressure on textbook publishers, to prevent Texas's slant from being pushed into their state by the new Texan law and their large influence on the market. Now other states have to decide if they're going to follow suit one way or another in order to try to have an unbiased or specifically biased version of history taught. It sets the stage for textbooks not written primarily by the best info of historians, but instead by political bodies as political game pieces. It will almost certainly result in less accurate textbooks in many places along with higher prices for those books.

Now, you were saying about Texas being a problem? Its only a problem if you want to maintain the bias.

Textbook publishers were not required by law to have a bias prior to the Texan law. You can claim they did, but you need to support that hypothesis with real evidence. We know textbooks are being forced to have a slant now, because a law was passed requiring specific things determined by politicians, not historians.

Its not a problem if you want things to be more centrist.

Are you so blindly partisan? I don't want centrist textbooks. I want accurate textbooks based upon the best info historians have and the best supported interpretations of that info.

We as a nation benefit if Texas gets changes made, and are harmed if California blocks those changes.

We as a nation have less well informed children if Texas gets it's changes made and less well informed children everywhere if other states pick up this trend. We also have less economy of scale and so more expensive textbooks for kids. That helps no one.

but as it is, what texas decides to do has an effect on me. thus, i have a right to say on what texas decides to do. if texas is going to unleash a bunch of propagandized holy warrior children into the usa, i want to clear my throat and say "no, texas, you don't get to whitewash history and zombify your children, because the influx of propagandized morons affects my life: these people vote, they make decisions, large and small, in loca, state

There are departures from fiction, and there are departures from fact. The geocentric model of the universe was not arrived at through modern skeptical scientific inquiry.

But this issue goes much deeper. It's not just that they are removing references to the progress America has made intellectually, socially and culturally, but they are replacing these references with inferences of their own, alleging that America is a Christian nation, recognizing the accomplishments of pro-slavery confederates and rationalizing McCarthyism as justified by some of the results.

However, it's not liberal bias to say that America is not a Christian nation. It simply isn't. There is not a single reference to the words "god", "Bible", "Jesus", "Christian", "religion" or "Church" anywhere in the Articles of the Constitution, and the single reference to religion in the Bill of Rights is the Establishment Clause which prohibits Congress from enacting any law concerning religious institutions, Christianity being one of them. This isn't a liberally-biased viewpoint. It is a fact. Just like evolution is a fact. We can debate how precisely either occurred, but that they are is a fact.

The problem with certain appeals to emotion, such as the "equal time" argument is that all opinions and arguments aren't equal. Some views, such as Intelligent Design, have zero scientific merit whatsoever, at least in the manner in which their proponents have presented them.

I know that we live in the Age of Entitlement, but no... not all opinions are equal. Some are substantiated in fact far better than others.